Why competences and resources?
Competences have to be understood as follows:
- competences are linked to situations, to complex tasks which have social relevance; they are in this way “situated” and have a social function;
- they are units with a degree of complexity;
- they call on different internal resources (generally a mix of knowledge, attitudes and skills) and external resources (dictionaries, mediators, etc.).
The descriptions given in FREPA competences and resources concern essentially two domains of competences:
- The competence to manage linguistic and cultural communication within a context of otherness
- The competence of constructing and developing a pluralistic repertoire of languages and cultures
FREPA identifies resources which are mobilised through these competences. These resources are presented in the form of descriptors.
Resources (knowledge, attitudes and skills):
The term resources is generally used for internal resources.
Internal resources (as well as the use of external resources, but not competences) can be taught in situations/ tasks which are at least partly decontextualised.
Competences are viewed mainly in the domain of social usage / needs, while resources seem rather to belong to the domain of cognitive (and developmental) psychology. In this view it is indeed competences which come into play when one engages with a task.
However, it is probably the resources that one can – to a certain point – distinguish and list, defining them in terms of mastery and working on them in educational practice.
Access to the FREPA lists of descriptors
The descriptors are accessible in different ways and in different languages:
- They are presented in this Website by using an hypertext format which makes visual exploration easier.
You can see them either in English (click on tab Descriptors at the top of the present page), or in French (tab Descripteurs),or in German (tab Deskriptoren)
- They are part of the document FREPA – Competences and resources
See under tab Components (English) / Éléments (French) / Instrumente (German) at the top of the present page.
(For network members: if this document has been translated into your language, replace the last sentence through : See the version in LLL on the right pane !)
- They are also presented in the online documentation FREPA - Tables of descriptors across the curriculum, using hypertext too, but with an additional graphical representation which situates each element of the tables in the learner’s curriculum.
See under tab Components (English) / Éléments (French) / Instrumente (German) at the top of the present page.